An eternity of not enough time
by Ophium
Summary: It's a normal, regular night, until it isn't. Malcolm gets into some trouble; his friends are there to help.
1. Chapter 1

Two minutes doesn't sound like a whole lot of time, not even when you break it down to seconds, but truth is… Einstein was right, time is relative.

At a normal rate, a heart beats over a hundred and fifty times in the span of those same two minutes; over three hundred times during normal exercise. In reality, it can beat over four hundred times in that time span before it starts malfunctioning. Edrisa's heart rate rarely goes over sixty beats per minute on a rushed day, and she's fine with that.

The male orgasm lasts for about five to six seconds, while women can reach from ten seconds to five minutes, if they're lucky in their choice of partner. Lately, she hadn't been. She likes the cuddling part though, and that can last well over five minutes.

The coffee machine in the break room downstairs takes about three minutes to produce a decent cup of coffee, five to burn it. She drinks an average of four burned coffees a day.

It takes roughly 60 seconds for the traffic light across the NYPD to go from green to red and in those last twenty seconds, it flashes so angrily in warning for the eminent change that Edrisa usually prefers to wait for the next one rather than risk becoming one more casualty for the day. Too many maimed corpses pass though her hands daily for her not to know exactly the end result of an altercation between human body and large, heavy, metal machine; not to mention the number of crazy people that she knows for a fact that roam the city behind a steering wheel at any given time. So, she waits.

Average, healthy adults have around five liters of blood flowing through them at any given time; it takes about one minute or less for a major hemorrhage to reduce that volume to nearly half. Half is not very compatible with life.

And yet, none of those facts explain why Edrisa finds herself late night at work, after one more failed blind date, with a nasty taste of burned coffee on her tongue, frozen in place while her heart hammers violently against her ribcage at nearly two hundred beats per minute, watching in horror as JT's hands turn slowly crimson as he desperately tries to keep some blood inside Malcolm, as the brilliant profiler bleeds all over the pristine floor of her morgue.

"The ambulance will be here in two minutes," Dani's voice, cracking at the seams, whispers in the otherwise quiet room. Or maybe it just sounds quiet now that the sound of gunfire and pained screams has faded.

Two minutes.

All of them know that that's too damn long. An eternity of not enough time.

….

Edrissa Tanak is not a cliché; in fact, she couldn't be less of a cliché.

She did not go to medical school because her parents were pushy and wanted their child to become a doctor. In fact, her father had been initially disappointed by her choice, as he had expected her to follow his footsteps in business, to take over the family company once he retired.

Edrissa wanted more of life than sort out the managing the day to day challenges of toy manufacturing. She wanted to help people.

On her internship's ER rotation, she had discovered that her she should have listened to her father.

….


	2. Chapter 2

Edrisa Tanaka had always been very proud of not being a stereotyped cliché, even though everyone who took a look at her face just tended to assume that she was. She had been fighting stupid stereotypes her entire life.

She did not go to medical school because her parents were over demanding and crazy about their only child becoming a doctor. In fact, her father had been somewhat disappointed by her career choice, as he had expected her to follow his footsteps in business and to take over the Tanaka family company once he retired.

But Edrisa had wanted more from life than sort out the day to day challenges of toy manufacturing. She wanted to help people. So she went to medical school.

Midway through her internship's ER rotation, she had discovered that she should have listened to her father. Toys, as it was, were harder to break than people.

….

It had all happened so fast that the details were already fading in the gut-wrenching panic that followed.

Edrisa had opened the doors of the ME's office to retrieve her keys from her locker -because _of course_ she would forget them today of all days- not really taking notice of her surroundings, when she came upon what could only be describe as a Mexican standoff.

Well, no... not really. In those, the people with the guns are supposed to be aiming them at each other, right? So, maybe it was just a regular stand off, because the sweaty guy with the out of control facial hair wasn't aiming his gun at either JT or Dani, as he should, because they were certainly aiming their pieces at him. No, he had it jammed under Malcolm's chin, pushing the profiler's head up in a way that looked nothing short of painful.

"Wha-?" her mind so confused that the medical examiner could not form a proper question. There were so many floating inside her head, all fighting for the front seat.

"Edrisa!"

"Get the hell out of here!"

She wasn't exactly sure who said what, but that didn't matter. Her whole world had shrunk down to the sight in front of her and all she could do was catalogue what her eyes were registering, like a post-mortem of the last moments of her life. Time slowed down as her breath caught in her chest and an eternity flew by.

Edrisa could see the trembling of Malcolm's right hand, trapped between his chest and the perp's arm, knuckles white with tension.

She could see the way that the imposing man using him as a shield was slightly slouching behind the profiler, shortening the difference in their heights, effectively preventing Dani or JT from venturing a lucky shot.

He stood so closely to his hostage that all she could see of his face was the bushy beard, grey and yellowed at points. A heavy smoker, her brain insisted on supplying her with the useless information, even as she registered in disgust that the man had his nose pressed against Malcolm's hair, invading his personal space, rubbing that filthy, unkempt beard against the other man's face in a manner that looked far more vile and disturbing than the gun shoved against his neck.

Finally she locked eyes with the man who had been her shameless crush ever since joining Gil's team. Gone was the mischief, the light mood and intelligent repartee that graced their usual interactions.

Bright's wide eyes were filled with fear... no, that look wasn't fear, not for himself at least. He looked... concern, frantic even, as he stared right back at her.

Because, in that split second that took the gunman to acknowledge her presence, the gun under Malcolm's stubbly chin was already moving away from him and pointing directly in her direction.

Edrisa had once watched a long winded -and very gory- documentary on violent reactions of cornered animals, how one should move slowly around them, avoiding loud noises and any sudden movement that might startled them and cause them to attack blindly.

To the guy trapped inside a morgue with two badass cops aiming guns at him, she might as well have stomped in there with a whole fanfare playing and fireworks shooting out her ass.

If it weren't for the absolute terror that had filled every fiber of her being, the small woman was pretty sure that she would have closed her eyes and missed what happened next. As it were, it happened so fast that she wasn't absolutely sure if what she was seeing was real or a product of too much adrenaline pumping through her circulatory system.

Bright moved like a panther. Ok, maybe that was still that damn documentary that she had seen, but he was... lightning fast. Effective too.

She had no idea what moves he had used, only that one moment that awful gun was about to blast in her face and the next the gunman was grunting in pain from a broken nose and standing in front of Malcolm, arms pinned behind his back, an arm around his neck, pulling him back, off-balance.

Her lungs screamed for oxygen and Edrisa finally remembered that she was supposed to breathe. She took a celebratory deep breath and was about to actually try to convince her heart that everything was okay now and that it could stop -well, not stop, that would be bad- it could finally slow down to a more civilized rate, when all hell broke loose. Again.

Because, you see, she hadn't been there for the beginning, and beginnings are important.


	3. Chapter 3

Edrisa was very good at memorizing stuff, particularly some of the most useless tidbits of information that she could find. Like, for example, she knew that New York had its own indigenous species of ant, the ManhattAnt... or that the average person can spent around six months of their entire life waiting for traffic lights to go from red to green.

Medical textbooks had been like candy to her. Applying all that knowledge to actual human beings, however, had proven to be a challenge.

Mostly because she was terrified of causing any degree of pain to people. In the beginning, she would actually flinch horribly whenever she had to stuck a needle into someone, which is, you know, fine-_ish_ if you're dealing with a vein or some stitches, but when she was dealing with arteries... nope, you better not flinch.

Corpses, fortunately for her, had no functioning nerve terminals, no working neural network to connect to and certainly no live vocal cords to express their discomfort. She could cut through a sternum like a pro, without even breaking a sweat.

It was just different with living, breathing patients. Most of the time it was impossible to separate the healing from the causing pain part, especially when her regular rotation had placed her in the trauma room of Manhattan's busiest ER.

….

The guy trapped in Malcolm's chokehold had taken one look at the clock hanging above the exit door and smiled. It was a most disturbing sight.

"Wha' you smiling at, asshole?" JT hissed, handcuffs clicking around the man's wrists with a certain degree of satisfaction. "You got a big date or somethin'?"

Edrisa could feel the fine hair in her arms standing on attention for reasons that completely escaped her rational thought. After all, the threat was gone. The man was under arrest, his gun tossed on the floor near the wall, no escape at all except towards a criminal law system that would sink its claws deep into the guy who had dared to invade her work space to... what exactly had he been doing there?

"It's on a timer, isn't it?" Malcolm voiced defeatedly, the words seemingly too innocent for the weight they carried or the effect they had on both JT and Dani, both visibly blanching. "You came here to get it back, but it's already set to go off at a specific time all the same, right?"

Only then did the medical examiner managed to connect the dots. And the final image was _not_ NotreDame.

The first body had been found less than a week before. Blood and gore were kind of part of Edrisa's job, having become as unremarkable to her as brushing her teeth... yes, gross, but accurate.

But even she had been a bit disturbed to find pieces of small intestine hanging from the ceiling of the crime scene. The ceiling and virtually every other surface in that room. The victim's guts had, according to all evidence, just exploded. Easiest COD that she had that whole week.

In the bodies that followed the explosions had just kept getting bigger and bigger, telling them that, not only that they had another serial killer on their hands, but also that he- and Malcolm had no doubt that it was a _he_\- was evolving from being a mission oriented serial killer to one with a growing lust for pure destruction. Apparently, that was bad.

The last body that had been found, just that morning, hadn't been much of a body at all, the explosion having been so destructive that all that had been left behind were charred pieces of bone.

"Oh, God! We need to evacuate the building ASAP!" Dani let out, her hand already reaching for the radio. "How much time do we have?"

The question had been directed to the man in cuffs, but everyone knew that he wasn't going to answer. His smirk had just gotten deeper as he stared at each one of them, as if he was imagining their dead corpses already.

"Th-the time of death," Edrisa found herself stammering. She was pretty sure they had all but forgotten that she was still there. "Time of death on the first three victims," she went on, confident that she had the answer to their question. "They all died around midnight... give or take a few minutes."

Now it was everyone else's eyes that travelled to the proverbial ticking clock, hers included. It was eleven fifty. They had about ten minutes.

"Ok, that's good enough for me," JT declared, taking charge of the situation and dragging the prisoner towards the door. The gunman looked disappointed. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

Edrisa blinked. He couldn't be serious. "No," she found herself saying, even though every fiber in her body wanted nothing else but race through those doors. "We can't... the bodies... we can't just leave them here!"

JT have her a sideways glance, as he often did, looking like he wasn't exactly sure if she was joking or talking seriously. However dark her humor tended to be, Edrisa would never joke about something like this.

"You're joking, right?"

There it was, the need for confirmation.

"Edrisa, honey, I understand where you coming from," Dani's voice was laced with practiced empathy. The underlaying urgency made it sound somewhat fake. "But we can't risk lives over-"

"Dead people!" JT let out. "As in -they're already dead!" he pointed out rather needlessly, as they _were_ in a morgue. "And we'll be joining them in- eight minutes if we don't haul ass! Now!"

"Edrisa is right."

The medical examiner could almost smile as she heard the words. Of course Malcolm would understand her, kin souls that they were. Only he would see the cruelty in denying the families of those victims closure; how the dead bodies in her morgue were theirs to keep safe until delivered to their final resting pla-

"We need to defuse that bomb and study it if we stand any chance to save all the others," Malcolm's voice cut through her thoughts. How could he sound so calm and collected?

And also, no! That wasn't why they shouldn't leave... although he did make a good point on—wait! There were _others_?!

"You can't save them! They don't deserve to be saved! Fat pigs, all of them!" the cuffed man hissed between his teeth, anger replacing all smugness in his face. From the way his face turned beet red at the words, Edrisa suspected a serious blood pressure condition.

"Is that why you killed them?" Malcolm asked, sounding genuinely interested. "Because they were over-weighted?"

Edrisa blinked. Despite the eminent danger and all the craziness that had taken over her life in the last few minutes, her brain offered a complete catalogue of the explosion victims she had been dealing with all week. None had been had been morbidly obese and at least two were actually underweighted. So, why-

"This all very fascinating-" JT gritted between his teeth, pushing the prisoner closer to the door. "Think we can we do this someplace where there isn't a BOMB about to go off?"

"Building's clear," Dani let them know, her eyes looking nervously at the clock. "I'm sorry guys, but I agree with JT... we should leave."

Edrisa rubbed her eyes tiredly, knowing that they were right. Still the idea of leaving all of those people behind, knowing that she would have to contact each and everyone of those families to tell them that, not only had their loved ones died violently, but also that the NYPD had managed to blow them up...

"Yeah.. you all should go," Malcolm let out, pulling out his jacket.

They were all fooled for about twenty seconds, until his words registered.

"You're not staying down here with a bomb, you idiot!" JT blared, his patience long gone. "Not again, you're not!"


	4. Chapter 4

"You're not staying down here with a bomb, you idiot!" JT blared, his patience long gone. "Not again, you're not!"

"I'll be fine," the profiler said. Even with his back turned to them, as Malcolm started to frenetically open random drawers and looking at body-tags, they could see that his entire body was vibrating with tension.

….

It happened on a Saturday, in December. She remembered that because she had been looking forward to spending a nice, quiet and warm Sunday at home when her twenty four hours in hell were over.

It had been a pretty normal day. A few cases of running noses, the odd broken bone and more stitches than she could remember -it had been really icy outside and too many people insisted on wearing the wrong kind of shoes- and Edrisa had found herself falling into a false sense of security. These were all cases that she could deal with in her sleep.

And then the two victims from the car accident arrived.

Most of the severe trauma cases were handled by other ER's with higher trauma level units, but as those two patients had been fairly stable, the EMTs had been diverted there, as they were closer.

At first glance, both patients' condition had seemed to be pretty straightforward; the guy behind the wheel had been conscious, breathing without trouble and complaining about chest pain and a headache, both expected as he had wrapped his car around a street lamp, fortunately while wearing his seatbelt. Has he had no alcohol in his system, everyone was blaming it on the icy roads.

The other guy hadn't actually been hit by the car, but by the street lamp, as it fell down, which had done wonders for his leg. The exposed bone fracture had looked nasty, even if fascinating, and Edrisa had decided there and then that her first priority was to stabilize that bone before any of the jagged edges decided to nick an artery and kill the guy.

That had been a decision that had forever changed the lives of two people on that Saturday, hers and the man she had killed.

….

Edrisa followed Bright's actions with a certain degree of curiosity. He was looking for a body in particular, that much was easy to guess, but why? It wasn't like she and her team were in the habit of storing bombs in a particular drawer. In fact, all bodies were x-rayed, some even scanned when there was the need for that... she would know if there had been a bomb inside one of them. "Are you sure-"

"And when you find it, what do you intend to do with it, genius?" JT went on as if she hadn't spoken at all, sounding like he was talking to a five year old. She believed that was his coping mechanism when dealing with Bright, to stop himself from slugging the younger man at least five times a day. "Do you even know how to disarm a bomb?"

"But-" Edrisa tried again. If only they would tell her what they were looking for, she could actually help in moving things along a lot faster.

"Of course! I took a... seminar," Bright supplied, casting a quick look at the taller man. Before resuming his search "At Quantico."

"A seminar..." the detective growled. "Dani, take Edrisa and this piece of trash out of here," he let out. "Someone who actually _knows_ something about bombs needs to stay behind with the village idiot."

The medical examiner gave the detective her very best stinky eye, not only because he was being mean to Malcolm -well, mean worded, because it was clear to see that his annoyance came from a place of concern-, but also because he was treating her as a child.

Edrisa knew JT and Dani were both very smart and competent detectives -Gil wouldn't have them on his team otherwise- and Malcolm, as far she was concerned, was a certified genius, which meant that if they believed that the bomb was inside one of the bodies still at the morgue it had to be disguised as something that neither she or her team would remove and send to evidence. Something that wouldn't be related with the cause of death and appeared to belong inside the body.

Since she was pretty certain that exploding tumors belonged in the realm of science fiction, it had to be some kind of prosthetic or implantable medical device. Only... in this day and age, more and more people tended to have one or more inside of them, some having become as common as hair dye. Bone and joints prosthetic replacements, insulin pumps, breast implants, pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators, heart valves... the list went on forever, and those were just the ones big enough to pack an explosive of decent size.

Either way, she could help find whatever it was they were looking for. They were, after all, in her turf, so to speak.

The gunman had mentioned 'fat pigs' when he referred to the people he had murdered, which was, first and foremost, offensive as hell, but also incorrect when applied to his victims. However, for people who didn't knew better, there was the common stereotype of diabetics being overweighted as a rule. A stupid stereotype, as they often were, of course.

There were different types of diabetes and, while some were indeed related to increased body mass, that wasn't the cause of diabetes for all insulin-dependent patients, as genetics played a more important role.

The point was... insulin pumps, of course! They were looking for the body of-

The shouted "Look out!" had been barely audible over the loud clatter of too many metallic instruments and tables clashing together.

Edrisa startled, reality harshly kicking her out of her thoughts and puzzle-solving escapades. Because, outside of her mind, there was still a ticking bomb somewhere inside the morgue and a dangerous man dead set on watching them all blow up.

And said dangerous man was no longer secure in detective's Tarmel's strong hold. Somehow in the discussion of who went and who stayed, the prisoner had taken advantage of the building tension and pushed JT against one of the instruments table before making a dash for his fallen gun.

Time slowed down. Like in those Matrix movies, but with a lot less entertainment value and a whole lot more of dreadful terror. Edrissa could see both Dani and JT pulling out their guns, could see the moment their fingers pressed the trigger in beautiful synchronicity.

The air filled with the sound of multiple weapons firing, thunder trapped inside a too small room.

Lethargically, the medical examiner pondered if she had heard two or three guns firing, wondering if the profiler carried a gun at all. From the ringing in her ears, she wondered how she was hearing anything at all. She looked up, eager to see if everyone was still alive and hopefully unharmed.

Only then did she noticed that her field of vision had been fully taken over by an expensive looking shirt of pale blue fabric. "Bright?"

To be completely honest, Edrisa had once -okay, twice at least- fantasied about what it would be like to have Malcolm Bright in her arms, moaning in absolute pleasure. As time resumed its regular pace and the profiler lost his fight with gravity, falling backwards with a pained moan, the small woman could only think that this was not what she had imagined. At all.


	5. Chapter 5

No one had actually blamed her for what had happened. But that wasn't the point. Just because she hadn't broken her Hippocratic oath or any other law, didn't mean that she was free from guilt.

She had, after all, done everything by '_the book_' as they say. Simple triage call, hemorrhage trumping over just about everything else, save for cardiac arrest, and neither of the two men had been in immediate danger of that. So, Edrisa had paid first and foremost attention to guy with the compound fracture, bleeding all over the place.

All she did for the other man, the driver, was order a full blood panel and an ECG, just to rule out a possible stress-related acute myocardial infarction. Unfortunately, those had been sorely inadequate to reveal the real cause for the driver's chest pain: a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurism. By the time Edrisa realized her mistake, it was already too late for the man. He had died on route for the cardio-thoracic OR that would have saved his life.

His name had been James Fisher, father of two and loving husband. He could have been a convicted serial killer, it still wouldn't have changed the weight that Edrisa carried inside her heart from that moment on.

That night she had learned two very important life lessons: that '_by the book_' wasn't always a good thing and that she was no good at helping the living.

….

Hadn't JT arrived to pull Bright from where he'd fallen on top of her, Edrisa was sure that she wouldn't have been able to move on her own. For a slender guy, the profiler felt like a wall of bricks.

"Shit! That doesn' look good," the otherwise stern and composed detective let out, carefully placing the smaller man on the floor before using both hands to stop the bleeding.

As soon as Edrisa managed to compose herself enough to sit up, she was forced to agree with his assessment. _Shit_ described the situation pretty accurately.

The bullet had hit just below Malcolm' sternum and from the high pressure jet of blood that would occasionally escape between JT's fingers as he struggled to cover the leak, Edrisa was certain that an artery had been hit. In that exact location, there were plenty of arteries to chose from, but only one stood in the direct path of that bullet's trajectory. If she was right, Bright was already as good as dead.

That bullet should have hit her. The simple concept should have been immediate to grasp, but Edrisa was pretty sure that she was in shock, so her failure to see the obvious was mostly excusable if not expected.

Had not Bright stepped in front of her to, once more, protect her when the guns started going off, she would have been the one on the floor.

Only she wouldn't be seriously wounded, she would be seriously dead. Taking in account the difference in their heights, and given the bullet's trajectory, it would have hit her dead center in the chest, probably straight in the heart, instantly killing her.

Her heart, apparently having reached the realization of how close it had come to be torn in to pieces, decided to explode inside Edrisa's chest, beating wildly against her ribs, distracting her lungs from doing their job. Sweat broke out all over her skin even as the lights seemed to dim down.

"The ambulance will be here in two minutes," Dani's words sounded small and fragile, even as she bit her lower lip from keeping it from trembling.

She was standing behind JT, her boots pressing against Malcolm's right knee. Beyond her lay the body of the gunman, unmoving, twin holes venting his upper chest. One of them seemed to have hit him straight in the heart. There was nothing to be done for him.

"We can't let the EMTs come down here, not when there's a bomb about to go off," JT reminded, his military background apparently granting him a much necessary leveled head in the heated situation. "What's the ETA on that bomb squad?"

The younger detective didn't had to answer that. Her eyes told them that it would not be there in time. "I don't think we can move him," she voiced instead.

It was easy to see that JT's pressure on the wound was doing next to nothing to stop the bleeding, but every time his fingers slipped, the spray became much worse. Bright would bleed out before they even hit the stairs. Of course, he would be just as dead if they stayed there much longer. Dani's eyes flickered back to the clock on the wall. "We have four minutes," she related. "Edrisa, you should- Edrisa?"

The medical examiner could feel warm hands around her shoulders, gently shaking her. "Edrisa, are you okay? Are you hurt? Did the bullet hit you as well?"

The smaller woman took a shaky breath before pulling away from Dani's hold. "No... I-I mean, I d-don't think s-s-so," she stuttered. Truth was, her whole body was numb, so there might have been a gapping hole in the middle of her chest and she wouldn't be able to feel a thing. She didn't think there was one though, because someone she cared about had gotten hurt making sure of that.

The biggest tragedy of the night was supposed to have been the fact that her date had been an absolute dull man with had no interest in science -fiction or otherwise- and that she had forgotten her house keys at work. How had she ended up standing over a bleeding Bright and a bomb about to blow on their faces?

"You need to snap out of it and get the hell out of here," JT informed her very calmly, like it was the most logical thing to do. "We'll handle this." He never mentioned that he and Dani would be right behind her; it didn't cross anyone's mind to leave Malcolm behind and save themselves. They just couldn't bring themselves to do the sensible thing and carry him out of there. Not just yet. Not when that would be as good as killing him themselves.

"Maybe we can use one of the examining tables," Dani suggested. "They have wheels."

Edrisa forced herself to breathe slower, deep breaths that pushed against the muscles in her chest, allowing some of the tension to bleed out. _Bleed out_... god! Bright was bleeding out! They had to do something about it! She needed to do something! "No... we need to find the bomb," she found herself saying, not really recognizing from where the strength in her words was coming from.

"There's no time," Dani pointed out. Her phone was hanging from her limp hand, the world at the reach of her fingertips and yet helpless to save her fallen partner. "We don't even know where the bomb is."

"He knew," JT let out, grim faced. He looked down at the unconscious man, maybe hoping that he would miraculously wake up and tell them what they need to know. "We were down here on a hunch, because at least two of victims had been to the same clinic this month," the detective mumbled words spilling out from his lips even as his eyes focused on his bloody hands. "Apparently, the prick over there had something against diabetics," he growled, sending a disgusted nod towards the dead gunman. "One came in here this afternoon, a Bill Davis, thirty four, suicide. Bright thought that there might be a connection."

"I know where he is!" Edrisa let out, stress turning into maniac energy as she finally could do something. "And I know what we're looking for!"

The twin looks of mixed puzzlement and clear questioning of her sanity were something that Edrisa was used to seeing directed at Bright. It came with an odd sense of pride and satisfaction to see it now directed at her.


	6. Chapter 6

Average, healthy adults have around five liters of blood flowing through them at any given time. That might seem like a lot, but given the insane amount of cells in the human body (over thirty seven trillion!) that depend on that blood to live, it's really not that much. Which makes every single drop all the more precious.

A single drop of blood can contain up to three hundred million red cells.

Looking at the floor surrounding Bright, Edrisa couldn't dare try to estimate how many billions he had lost already. It was too much, for certain.

In the background, the medical examiner could hear the faint noise of Dani opening and closing drawers, of her muffled cry of triumph when she found the right body and pulled the sliding table out in a swoosh of metal against metal.

Her hearing, however, had been taken over by Malcolm's rapid and shallow breathing and JT's endless string of quiet cursing. He was on his knees, moving around the younger man and multitasking like some weird octopus of the law. He had managed to wiggle one leg beneath Malcolm at the same time that he was taking his coat off, all the while trying to keep at least one hand pressing on the gushing wound at all times. It was... impressive.

"We gotta do somethin', dude's cold as a corpse," the detective let out, his voice betraying a level of concern for the fallen profiler that no one could ever believe would come from him, not for Bright anyway. "His pulse is getting' weaker too... I can barely feel it."

Edrisa nodded, her head bobbing up and down too fast, making her dizzy. It made sense, it was, after all, how the body responded to these sort of traumatic events. Respiratory acceleration, to increase the uptake of oxygen; elevated heart rate to pump blood faster across every tissue. Unfortunately, the human body had a tendency to fight for normalcy and balance no matter what cost, without a single thought towards consequences.

Malcolm's heart would keep on pumping faster and faster until there was nothing left to pump and whatever did managed to reach his cells would flash by so fast that no exchanges would be made, no oxygen in, no carbon dioxide out, no nutrients, no sugar... cells would rapidly die, systems shutting down one by one, starting with his brain.

Despite the pang of pure devastation that consumed Edrisa at the thought of losing such a brilliant brain, still she couldn't bring herself to actually move and get any closer to the injured man. To do something.

Strangely enough, she found that she could deal with a bomb and the pending, violent death that could hit them all at any minute; she couldn't quite deal with moving to help Bright.

"Humm... we need..." Edrisa stumbled over the words. Somewhere in her brain, there was the necessary information about what needed to be done, but all she could see was the face of James Fisher, father of two and loving husband, the man she had failed to save.

What if she ended up hurting Malcolm even worse? What if she made the wrong call and ended up killing him instead?

But JT was right. The profiler was going into shock fast and if nothing was done to stop that, he would soon go into cardiac arrest. Edrisa could see the way sweat had built all over his forehead and the hallow of his neck; she could tell Malcolm's lips were already tinged blue.

They needed to keep him warm, something that anyone with first aid training, like JT and Dani, knew perfectly well. But a morgue is the last place on earth where you find warm blankets and none of them were wearing particularly warm coats. JT's coat was there, but the man was mostly using it as a bandaid.

They needed to ease Malcolm's blood circulation as much as possible, but Edrisa noticed that JT had already taken care of that as well, loosening the profiler's necktie and keeping a knee under Bright's legs, keeping them elevated.

"Guys... two minutes," Dani reminded them. "I have the EMTs on the line, waiting for green light."

"You need to figure out a way to stop the bleeding," the detective's voice cut through her thoughts, his eyes searching hers for understanding.

"M-me?"

"Yeah, you," he let out, gaze darting between her and Dani. The younger detective was standing over the dead body of Bill Davis, but she seemed lost on what to do. "I need you to switch places with me, so that I can deal with the bomb."

The bomb, of course. Someone needed to deal with that. Sooner rather than later.

"Of c-course, I can do that," Tanaka let out. _Fake it 'til you make it_, that had been her motto during her first rotations as an intern. She could do this. She just needed to stop a possible aortic rupture with no access to an OR or any medical instruments or drugs. Easy-peasy. A walk in the park. As easy as steal-

"Y're still not moving," JT reminded her.

The small woman startled and finally moved forward, like her whole body was being pulled by an invisible string. Her legs were shaking so badly that she was sure she would face-plant the floor before reaching the two men. It didn't take more than two steps, but Edrisa was exhausted by the time she knelt by Bright's side.

He... didn't looked good. Of course no one can actually look their best when bleeding out on the cold floor of a morgue, but he actually looked bad enough to be inside one of those drawers, rather then outside. The whole thing just looked... wrong. Unjust. Downright foul.

A sudden surge of anger at the unfairness of it all suddenly overtook the medical examiner. Anger at the gunman, who had decided to invade her workspace and put them all in danger; anger at herself, for freezing so thoroughly in the face of danger; but mostly anger at Malcolm, for assuming that his life was less important than hers, for constantly placing himself in danger to protect her, not knowing the devastating effects that his actions had on those he aimed to protect. If the world lost Malcolm Bright because he had jumped in front of a bullet that was meant for Edrisa Tanaka... she would never forgive herself. Or him.

"You got this?" the detective asked, searching her eyes. At the woman's jerky nod, he grabbed her hands and placed them over the coat, holding it in place against the bleeding wound. "Good... put your weight into it."

Tarmel's coat was made of light black denim. It felt sticky and cold under her hands, the fabric shiny wet, already soaked through. Sticky ice under her fingers.

Ice.

Suddenly, Edrisa knew exactly what she needed to do.

"We're gonna need a knife, a pair of scissors, anything that can cut through this guy's skin," JT mumbled at a distance, his gaze intense as he looked at the dead body. The insulin pump stood out against the corpse's stomach, just beneath the discolored skin.

"There's sterile scalpels in the cabinet on your right, get one for yourselves and hand me the other," Edrisa called out. "And since you're getting the take out orders," she added, a hint of dark humor in her voice, "can someone fetch me that big grey cylinder by the wall? The one with the black stripe on the side?"

It took the two detectives only a few seconds to round up everything, but it was still enough time for Edrisa to wonder if she was doing the right thing or if she was simply insane.

"This thing says liquid carbon dioxide on the label," JT grumbled, even as he set the cylinder and scalpel within her reach. "You know the dude's not on fire, he's bleeding out," he pointed out.

"I'm aware," Edrisa voiced, sounding a lot more confident than she felt. "Trust me," she added with a wink. "Go stop that bomb... I got this."


	7. Chapter 7

If there was one thing that everyone in the NYPD knew about detective JT Tarmel was that the man was tough as nails and did not suffer fools gladly. He was also squirmish as hell about all things sharp and gory. "Shit... I can't do this," JT let out in a frustrated sigh, pulling the scalpel away from the edge of the corpse's skin, where it had been resting for the past thirty seconds without making actual contact. "Dani?"

The young woman just nodded, her gaze focused as she took the sharp instrument from her partner's hands and pressed it against the discolored skin of the dead man. "I mean, it's not like we're gonna hurt him, right?" she let out, more to herself than anyone else. Still, her hand shook as she started cutting.

As soon as she had an opening wide enough, Dani pushed her fingers inside with a silent gag and pulled out a metal object covered in blackish gunk. It looked remarkably like a pocket watch.

JT, by her side, was keeping his eyes as far away as he could from what the younger woman was doing. "Is it out?"

"Yeah, it's out... now, do your thing," Powell informed. Despite the circumstances, there was a hint of amusement in her voice. If they managed to live to tell this tale, she was going to make sure JT would never forget it. "One minute to go," she warned. They were cutting it awfully short.

….

As she maneuvered the metallic cylinder to lie on the floor closer to Malcolm, Edrisa was silently listing in her head all the security protocols that she would be disregarding in the next few seconds. Like keeping the pressurized container standing at all times, for a start.

Or using protective gear when handling something that's over a hundred degrees bellow zero. Like thick gloves, protective glasses... none of which she had time to fetch.

Of course, there was rule number one, the _never come in to direct contact_ with the damn thing, which was the very rule that Edrisa was counting on breaking to keep Bright alive until he reached a hospital. In theory.

Because, in theory, the liquid CO2 inside the container would instantly freeze the blood coming from Malcolm's gushing artery, forming a temporary cork that would effectively stop the bleeding.

On the other hand, it could also form the biggest clot ever known to Man, travel down Malcolm's circulatory system and eventually block all blood flow to one or both his legs, effectively robbing him of any chance to walk ever again. Or he could simply die instantly from the trauma of having his insides exposed to a temperature of minus one hundred and ten.

"Just so you know," Edrisa pointed out in a hushed tone, "this whole situation is just ruining all of my fantasies about you."

So, yeah, she might have, at one point _perhaps_, most probably after a glass of wine or two, imagined herself peeling away layer upon layer of Bright's expensive designer clothing. Those fantasies, however, had never involved sharp scalpels or the any amount of blood.

It was scary how much blood kept pouring out, especially when Edrisa was forced to stop the compression in favor of unbuttoning Malcolm's shirt. It was so much that she could barely see the wound enough to start cutting.

"So—sorry... 'bout tha-"

The medical examiner nearly dropped the scalpel in her hand. Were it not for proximity and her panic-heightened senses, she wouldn't have even heard the whispered words. As it was, it felt like Malcolm had shouted in her ear. "How are you even _conscious_?" she hissed, the words just escaping her lips without asking her brain for permission. Because of all the messed up things to happen... _Why_ was he conscious _now_, when she needed to make an incision to widen the entry wound, stick a metal tube in there and literally freeze his insides? No one should be conscious and aware to experience _that_. Ever.

But he wasn't aware, at least not all the way. Edrisa could tell that his usually clear and sharp eyes were murky and dull, not really focusing on anything, rolling aimlessly like a pair of blue eight-balls.

From the languish way his eyelids were moving, he wouldn't be staying conscious for long. He looked like a small child, forever defiant of bed time and fighting sleep like it was a dragon to be conquered.

"What are you sorry for?" she found herself asking. A few more seconds and she was sure that he wouldn't be cognizant enough to feel anything. Of course, he didn't exactly had a few seconds to spare, but at that point she couldn't be sure if she was stalling for his sake or hers.

"Ru-ruin' your... fantasies," he eventually whispered, the smile he was aiming for quickly turning into a grimace as he tried to breathe a little deeper.

"He's awake?"

Edrisa startled at the intrusion, even if it was welcomed. Dani had, apparently, left JT to deal with the bomb and veered back to them. The detective sounded just as surprised as she had been.

"Kind of," the medical examiner breathed. Looking down at the injured man, she had her doubts. His eyes had closed again. "The bomb?"

"Thirty seconds," JT replied from his corner. There was no way to tell if he meant that as an estimated time for defusing the bomb or for it to blow up. As it was, Edrisa couldn't wait any longer.

"Could you-?" she whispered, casting a look at the other woman. She would forever be grateful to Dani, who simply took in what she was about to do without voicing a single question and wordlessly understood what Edrisa needed her to do. She quietly knelt down on the profiler's other side, unconcerned with the blood soaking her jeans, her hands wrapping around Malcolm's wrists, effectively restraining him. "Go ahead," she urged, steel resolve lacing her voice.

Edrisa didn't allow herself time to breathe, pause or have any doubts. She pressed the scalpel against Bright's blood covered skin and started to cut, cringing as his muscles contracted in pain the second the blade made contact.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry," Edrisa found herself muttering over and over, trying to cover for the anguished moan that kept coming from the injured man, a guttural sound of pure, unrestrained agony. Pain that was coming by her hands, by her doing.

She forced herself to keep on going, ignoring the feeble struggles against Dani's hold, the way his shoes kept slipping and sliding against the bloody floor as he unconsciously tried to escape their touch.

The medical examiner spent her days cutting bodies from elbow to pubic bone without blinking an eye or breaking a sweat. Cutting one inch and a half into a semi-conscious Malcolm Bright had felt like twice that distance.

A soon as she was done, Edrisa swiped the sweat from her forehead absentminded, tossing the scalpel away like it was a snake about to bite her. It clattered obscenely loud against the stone floor.

"You good?" Dani voiced, her voice strained and lips pressed against one another. She looked pale in the harsh morgue lights. They all did.

"I'm amazing," the smaller woman let out, the weak attempt at sarcasm falling flat against the wetness in her eyes. "Now comes the really fun part."

Carelessly wiping her blood-covered hands on her sweater, Edrisa pulled the container closer and pushed the opening against the cut she had made. As she twisted the valve open, the medical examiner could only think about poetic justice and how karma wasted no time. This was going to hurt her as much as Bright.

This time, he did managed to scream, a blood curling sound that would have waken the dead and send them running.

Edrisa screamed as well, as liquid ice spilled backwards against her hand and cast her whole existence into a bottomless pit of hurt.

Over it all, JT's triumphant shout of "Got it!" had been barely heard.


	8. Chapter 8

There was an odd sense of peacefulness that came with pre-dawn hours. Everything seemed to slow down to an almost standstill and watch as the overwhelming darkness of night and the bright light of day mingled promiscuously to create something entirely new. A new day, a fresh new set of chances and hope.

It felt like the world itself paused to take a deep breath before plunging into another day.

The room was filled with mechanical sounds, tasteless music at its worst. The periodic whirl of the blood pressure cuff filling up and then deflating in gentle clicks; the sharp hiss of the ventilator, pushing oxygen inside; the digital monitor by the bed, its chirping beeps set to to the rhythm of the body's natural metronome, beat after beat, after beat.

It was, at the same time, reassuring and frightening. Because, as effortless and rhythmic as it sounded, it could also stop, just like that, snuffed out of existence. No more beats. No more hissing. No more life.

Malcolm's heart had stopped in the OR. Twice.

Edrisa was well aware that she shouldn't know that, but the file had been right _there_ and she hadn't been able to help herself. She had looked. Read every detail, even past the point when the knowledge of how close she had come to kill Malcolm Bright left her covered in sweat and feeling nauseated.

She also shouldn't be there, inside that room, sitting by his side. But, being a medical professional had its perks and Edrisa knew her way around a hospital, even if she had never worked in that particular one. It hadn't been that hard for her to escape her room, grab a discarded lab coat from the laundry basket and make her way to the post-op cardio-thoracic recovery room.

She really shouldn't be there, but _had_ to see him.

The last thing the medical examiner could remember with a certain degree of clarity was pushing the dial in the liquid CO2 container and experiencing a level of blinding pain like she had never felt before. After that, everything became a blur of snapshots and pieces of sound that did little to put her heart at ease or give her a full understanding of what was happening. Her hands, oddly enough, had stopped hurting altogether. She couldn't even feel if they were still attached at the bottom of her wrists. Shock was truly a wonderful thing.

She remembered the morgue suddenly filling with dozens of people, some faces that she knew from the precinct, some just a blurry human-shape with huge letters printed on their backs that should have been familiar to her, but made absolutely no sense at the time. EMT. CSU. BDU. MEO. A whole alphabet soup of jumbled nonsense.

Gil had been there, or maybe it was someone who could make one hell of a good impersonation of the Lieutenant's stern goatee and his concerned face.

She remembered someone raising a fuss because there had been only one ambulance and where was the second one because no one wanted to wait for it. It was only when Edrisa found herself in the back seat of Arroyo's car, flanked on each side by his detectives, did it clicked that the second ambulance they were freaking about had been meant for her. Gil had ended up driving her to the hospital, flashing angry red and cold blue lights all the way there.

In the midst of all that chaos, Edrisa had lost track of Bright.

The next coherent thought that she could recall had been hours after that, waking up in a hospital bed, her hands numb and stuffed inside bandages so thick that it looked like she was wearing white boxing gloves. The thought had made her giggle and vaguely wonder how large a dose of painkillers they had given her. Still, she couldn't get ride of Rocky's theme song playing inside her head.

Second degree burns on half of her right hand, mostly her index finger and thumb and multiple minor lesions on her left hand. She had been very lucky, as doctor Simms had told her very condescendingly -not even bothering to hide the fact that he thought she was a complete moron for handling dangerous substances without protective gear- because there had been no damage to the tendons in her hands, but some of her nerve endings, specially on those two fingers, could be compromised.

Edrisa had pretended to listen carefully, hadn't bothered to correct his assumptions on her lack of basic intelligence and had started planning her escape as soon as the annoying man had left the nurses' station.

Fortunately for her escape plans, someone had decided to dress her in a pair of white scrubs, rather than those horrible gowns that flashed more skin than they covered. One sharp pull with her teeth and the IV line in her arm was out, the boxing gloves coming in handy -ah, her first pun!- to stop the minor bleeding that issued.

None of the information he had provided her had been of any use whatsoever. She already knew that her hands had been burned; she had been aware of that fact even before opening the valve on that container. What she did not know was whether Malcolm was alive or dea-

The medical examiner had taken the absence of anyone from the team by her side as a good sign. If they weren't there, it was because they were still waiting on news from Bright. Of course, as she wasn't actually a part of the team, it could simply mean that they hadn't bothered to stand around waiting for her to wake up. But she wasn't going there yet.

Left on her own to find some answers, Edrisa did what she was good at: she set about to finish the puzzle. First, she had to get her hands on some inconspicuous clothes; then a computer.

Of course that, while clothes were easy enough to steal -borrow- computer databases related to patient information tended to be password protected in hospitals; Edrisa knew that because she had demanded the same for all the computers in the medical examiner's office. She also knew that there was always at least one person who didn't bother with memorizing the password and kept it close at hand, usually near the computer. For this one, it had been username a_medic, password iRule69. What a dick.

Typing using nothing more than the butt of a pen was painfully slow, but eventually she managed to do it, before losing her patience and ripping off her bandages. The computer screen lit up and information started to roll in front of her eyes.

Bright was still in surgery. Had been there for the past four hours. That was the last entry in his file.

Edrisa took a breath, feeling relief for the first time in that dreadful night. He was still alive, still fighting.

The medical examiner knew that she should have stopped there. That file was private, confidential and the fact that she was a doctor didn't meant that she could access random information about someone who was most definitely not her patient.

But she was also the person who had discharged a blast of ice cold liquid death inside Malcolm and she _needed_ to know.

Like slowing down in the highway to catch a glimpse of the most gruesome accident, Edrisa scrolled down.

She had been right. The bullet had nicked Malcolm's left seventh rib, bouncing down to cause a small tear in the abdominal aorta before lodging itself in the liver.

And that was just the damage from the gunshot wound. The rest of it, was damage caused by her.

Abdominal muscle damage.

Third degree burn to the aortic wall and the liver's right lobe.

Second degree burns to the inferior vena cava.

Tear to the right diaphragmatic dome.

The small woman had no idea for how long she stood there in front of that computer, transfixed by the words on the screen, too horrified to move or even breathe. In her mind's eye, she could see in vivid detail every single piece of trauma that her actions had caused the profiler, the discoloration of damaged muscle, the blackness of dead tissue. If by any chance he managed to survive, she was sure Malcolm would never want to see her face ever again.

For some reason, the idea of not seeing that wide, innocent smile on Bright's face -the one that made his eyes sparkle with childlike wonder- whenever she presented him with a new and interesting case ever again, it somehow felt like tangible, physical pain.

The scroll of information on screen moved down on its own, signaling that new information had been added and Edrisa rushed up to read. She had mostly skimmed over the surgeon's notes -massive trauma, endovascular prosthesis, blood transfusion- before the need to actually see the profiler with her own eyes had made it impossible to read anything else and she had left to find him.

"He's a tough kid."

The male voice made the small woman almost jump through the ceiling, an explosion of multicolored stars filling her vision as she managed to smash her bandaged hand against the bed rail in the process. "Shit!"

"You shouldn't be here," Gil quietly informed Edrisa, coming to stand by her side. He sounded more tired than angry.

Edrisa shrunk into herself, blushing under the man's words. Everyone knew that Gil was a sort of parental figure for everyone around the precinct. In Malcolm's case, it just so happen that he had been doing it for longer, had probably been more of a father to the problematic profiler than the Surgeon had ever been. If he didn't want her near his _son_ after what she had done, he had every right to kick her out. If he was pissed off enough, he could kick her out so hard that she could even lose her job.

"I'm sorry... I shouldn't have... so-sorry," the medical examiner stammered, bouncing to her feet. "Sorry. I'm going to-"

Gil frowned, a hand on her shoulder pressing her back into the chair. "I _meant_... that you should be resting in your own bed," he clarified, realizing that she wasn't quite getting the meaning of his words. "Everyone's been going crazy, looking for you downstairs."

Edrisa's eyes grew large behind her glasses. "Oh... I thought you meant-"

"You saved his life, you know that, right?" the older man asked, his dark, sharp eyes searching her face for an answer before she could open her mouth. "He'll tell you this himself as soon as he can, but for now I'll say it for him and for myself- thank you!"

Edrisa blinked. This was not what she had been expecting, at all. Were it not for the glint of unshed tears in the Lieutenant's eyes, she would assume that he was pulling her leg. As it was, she was sure he just didn't had the right information. "I read his medical file... I nearly killed him," she found herself confessing.

Arroyo's eyes had once again been pulled to the man on the hospital bed, a tight lipped smile on his face. "Shortly before he got into Harvard, Malcolm was dead set on getting himself a bike. His mother had been against the idea, complete forbid him from doing such a thing, saying that it was far too dangerous and that respectable young men should drive cars, not death-traps on two wheels."

"I love bikes," Edrisa let out with a heartfelt sigh. She had never actually worked up the nerve to buy one for herself, but ridding with someone else was just exhilarating. She would love to ride one with Bright.

"I... I've always had a hard time telling Malcolm no," he confessed, sending her an amused sideways glance. "So, I let him borrow mine, because he assured me that he could ride one safely," the Lieutenant went on, closing his eyes at the memory. It didn't look like a pleasant one, going from the lines of pain that flourished across the older man's face. "The accident wasn't even his fault. Just some kid who ran straight into heavy traffic. Malcolm drove head-on into a concrete wall to avoid hitting him."

Edrisa flinched. She'd had seen too many of those on her table, bodies mangled beyond recognition because of a split second decision gone bad. "Is that where he got the scars on his face?"

Because, of course she had noticed. The faint cracked line above his right eye and the thin white line that ran from his nose to the tip of his upper lip that Malcolm tried to hide under facial hair. Professional pride aside, because it was her job to notice these things, the medical examiner had always thought that it was the small imperfections that made the profiler's face all the more appealing.

Gil chuckled at that, the amount of years that had gone by finally allowing him to find the humor in the whole situation. "You know, he got a real nasty fracture to his arm in that accident, but what his mother never forgave me, was the fact that he got a couple of tiny scars on his face from crashing my bike."

"It wasn't your fault," Edrisa rushed to point out. Traffic accidents happened all the time, about eleven percent of them involved motorcycles.

"I know that... now," the Lieutenant agreed, looking pointedly at her, like this was the point he had been trying to make all along. "Malcolm still ended up buying himself a bike, much to his mother anger and dismay. He rode that damn thing for years without getting a single scratch, and then he got tired of it and put it away."

Edrisa closed her eyes, unable to bear looking at Bright's still figure, endotracheal tube stuffed past his lips and shoved all the way to the edge of his lungs, breathing for him, because _she_ had damaged his diaphragm and he couldn't breathe on his own. "It's not the same. I... hurt him," she whispered, the tears that she had been refusing to shed finally streaming down her eyes. "I was... the scars will be my doing..."

The warmth of strong arms around her frail frame was more than Edrisa thought she deserved. By all rights, Lieutenant Arroyo should hate her for what she had done to Malcolm, and yet, there he was, comforting her.

"Like I said, he's a tough kid," he voiced into her hair, tucking her head against his shoulder. "And so are you."

….

"You coming with us?"

The question seemed innocuous, but the fact that Dani had troubled herself to come to Edrisa's office to ask spoke of how much planning had gone into it.

The medical examiner wasn't exactly _officially_ back to work yet, as her burned hands were still healing, but staying away, locked up at home, was starting to do a serious number on her head. So she had decided to come and haunt her minions instead, busying herself with bureaucratic crap until she could get her hands dirty again. So to speak.

Walking back into the morgue after all that had happened had not been easy. Well, that was, of course, the understatement of the year. Walking barefoot on rusty nails would have been easier, but she had eventually managed.

It somehow helped to know that, thanks to them, the killer would not be hurting anyone else, ever again. The bomb that JT had managed to defused had led them to ten more people carrying bombs, potential victims that were now safe and sound with new insulin pumps inside of them, minus the explosives now, free to live the rest of their lives.

Sure, she still saw glimpses of Malcolm's body over various surfaces of the morgue and sometimes she would look down and see a puddle of gushing blood by her feet, but her therapist told her that was perfectly normal under the circumstances, even if he wasn't all that reassuring when it came to tell her exactly when that would stop happening. Or when would the bad dreams start to fade away.

Dani stood by the door, patiently waiting, hoping that today her answer would be different from the previous days.

The young detective and JT had been visiting Malcolm at the hospital almost everyday for the past week, always coming back with full reports on how much better he was doing, how he was starting to get antsy about getting out of the hospital, of how he kept asking about her.

Edrisa was grateful for them, for keeping her in the loop and calming her concerns about the profiler's recovery, but she had yet to work up the nerve to actually go see his progress for herself. Not with him awake and able to speak words to her.

Despite everyone's reassurances, she was still afraid that he might blame her for what she had done.

"I'm really busy right now?" Edrisa stated, even though it ended up sounding like a question. She had always been such a terrible liar. "Maybe tomorrow... tomorrow, for sure!" she added with a forced smile. She would have added two thumbs up, but the physical therapist told her that was still weeks away from happening.

"Come on, Edrisa. Don't you miss those big, blue, doe eyes of his?" the detective asked with a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows. "Don't you have some weird, freakish death that you wanna geek-out with him? The poor guy is bored to tears... he would love the distraction."

Edrisa gave her a somewhat more genuine smile. There was actually a case that had arrived just the previous day, a woman strangled by her own hair during her sleep... "I... can't. Not today..."

Dani sighed, running a hand through her messy curls before stepping inside and closing the door behind her. "You're avoiding him," she pointed out. It wasn't a question or an accusation, just a stated fact.

The medical examiner deflated in her seat, letting her head fall to hit the desk in front of her. "That obvious, hum?" she mumbled.

Dani nodded. "He's a smart guy. He knew you were avoiding him the minute he opened his eyes and you weren't there along with the rest of us," the detective explained with a smile. "You know, he actually thinks that the reason you're doing it is because you're mad at him."

Edrisa's head popped back up with a jolt, like someone had poked her with a lightning bolt. "Wha—what? Why? Why would he think such a thing? Why would I-"

The detective actually blushed at the question, a reaction that did not escape the other woman's eye. "JT and I might have had something to do that..." she confessed. "And Gil... Gil _definitely_ had something to do with that."

Edrisa blinked slowly, leaning back against her seat. Waiting.

Dani rolled her eyes, leaning back against the wall, unconsciously widening the distance between them. "We had a serious talk with him... a sort of intervention, " she started, nipping on her thumb nail. "He keeps throwing himself head-on into this dangerous situations, with zero regard for his own well-being," she spurted, darting a mortified look at the medical examiner as she realized how that might have sound. "I mean, we were more than relieved to see that you hadn't been hurt by that gunshot, and had JT or myself been closer to you, we'd probably have ended up doing exactly the same thing," she rushed to add. "But it's just that... he's al-"

"He always puts everyone else's safety ahead of his own," Edrisa finished, the sentiment echoing how she had felt in the night Malcolm had gotten hurt. "I hate that he does that," she confessed.

Dani blinked, listing her head to the side, as if the angle would give her a better perspective of Edrisa's meaning. "So... he's right? You're actually mad at him?"

"No! Of course not!" the medical examiner let out vehemently, her pale face drastically changing to red. "He saved my life, how could I possibly be mad at him?"

"Then why?"

Edrisa sighed, twisting her nose like the subject carried a foul smell. "I knew all too well what liquid CO2 does to exposed skin, and still I flooded his insides with the stuff," she said, her voice breaking until it was nothing more than a whisper. "I almost killed him."

The 'almost' in that sentence was not nearly enough to stop the pain that those words caused. One more minute of delay in reaching the hospital, a mere second of hesitating on part of the team that received the injured man, an microscopic error in Malcolm's surgery and he _would've_ died. It had been so close that the mere fact that he was actually alive felt like a dream. Any minute now, Edrisa expected to wake up and find herself behind bars for involuntary manslaughter.

Dani closed the distance between the two of them, laying a hand on the smaller woman's shoulder, urging her to look up. When she did, the detective gave her a warm smile. "You saved his life... how could he possibly be mad at you?"

….

Her legs were shaking by the time Edrisa reached Bright's hospital room. Inside, she could see a dark haired woman sitting by his side, talking in hush tones. All she could see of the profiler was the shape of his legs under the bedcover, nervously bouncing against the mattress.

"Mother, I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself," Malcolm slightly raised voice broke the spell. "In my own apartment, lying in my own bed... there's absolutely no need to-"

JT cleared his throat rather dramatically, stopping the profiler on his tracks. He and Dani stood behind Edrisa, effectively cutting off any potential for escape.

A genuine smile spread across Malcolm's lips before reaching his eyes and Edrissa's legs shook for entirely different reasons.

"We can come back later?" Dani offered, even if she made no move to walk out of the room.

The older woman, Bright's mom, shook her head, taking a deep breath while closing her eyes shut. "No, my dear, don't bother... I was just on my way out," she let out after a moment, eyes wide open and a forced smile fresh upon her lips. While her tone was careless and her words carefully manicured, it was easy to see the heavy toll of deep concern and endless distress in the darkness beneath her eyes and the tight lines around her lips, signs that no amount of masterfully applied makeup could ever disguise. "Do see if you have better luck in shoveling some sense into my son's thick skull," she said all-too-sweetly, "and convince him that he's still no where near ready to go home this soon."

She left before anyone could actually say anything, a tornado of expensive perfume and raw frustration.

"JT, Dani... you've met my mother," he politely introduced, even though Jessica Whitly was long gone. "Charming, isn't she?"

"Don't be an idiot," JT let out without bite. "She's just worried about your sorry ass."

"Well, my sorry ass can recover just the same out of this place," he pointed out rather heatedly, moving to cross his arms over his chest before he thought better of it and let them drop to the mattress with a slight pout on his lips. "It's not like I'm doing much more than lying on it all day long..."

Dani hid a toothy smile behind her lips. "While we're on the subject of your ass..." she said, moving slightly aside before pushing Edrisa forward. Somehow, the smaller woman had managed to ninja her way to hide behind the two taller detectives. "I believe you two have some matters to discuss," she pressed on, giving JT a subtle nod towards the door.

Before Edrisa could offer any sort of protest, the door was already closing behind the sneaky detectives. Defeated, she took a deep breath before turning around and facing Malcolm.

He looked... alive.

It was such a generic thing to say about someone, but it meant the world to the medical examiner. The last couple of times she had seen him, Bright had been either bleeding to death on the floor of the morgue or hooked up to a ventilator after his surgery, looking for all intents and purpose like a human-size doll, just as devoid of life.

None of those images compared to the way he looked now. Conscious and aware of his surroundings, a sparkle to his eyes, some degree of color back on his skin and breathing easily on his own. "You're breathing," Edrisa let out, too marveled at the sight to stop the words from escaping her mouth.

Malcolm gave her an odd look. "I've been told its a necessity," he offered with a fleeting smile. His face turned all too serious as he let his gaze fall to his lap before adding a shy "I've missed you."

Edrisa finally summoned up the courage to approach his bed. "I'm really sorry I didn't come before," she rushed to say, hating to see that look on his face. "I was-"

"Avoiding me," he let out, his all too observant eyes traveling over her before stopping on her bandages hands. "They told me about- I'm sorry you got hurt," he let out. "Is it bad?"

The medical examiner shook her hands, regretting the action even before it started, dismissing the injury as nothing of importance. "Fine... I'm just fine," she assured him, wincing as she forced her hands still, feeling the dull throb long before they stopped moving.

Malcolm winced in sympathy, or maybe in real pain of his own, because Edrisa could see him trying to seat up straighter. "Stop moving, you'll tear up your stitches," she let out, jumping to grab the bed's remote control from where it hang over the bed-rail. One press of a button and the bed would do all the work for the profiler.

The damn thing, however, had tiny little buttons. Way too small for her fat, bandaged fingers to work. "Shit!"

A resounding laugh filled the room, sounding so out of place that it actually startled the medical examiner. It took her far too long to realize that the sound was coming from the man on the bed. Malcolm was clinging to his belly, obviously in pain but unable to stop laughing.

"What a pair we make," he finally managed to let out. "Au... that hurt!"

Despite it all, Edrisa couldn't help but smile. She had never heard the profiler laugh like that. It was kind of contagious. "So this is how my comedian career takes off," she huffed for effect, making the man smile even harder. She really should stop. There were tears leaking out the side of his eyes, and for a moment Edrisa wasn't sure if they were due to the pain or laughter. "I've missed you too," she found herself blurting out.

Malcolm stopped laughing then, even though his eyes were still alight with joy. "So... how angry are you at me?"

"That would depend on how angry you are at me," she asked in return, barely able to look at his face. When she did look, he appeared confused. "You know... for the almost killing you part."

Malcolm's left hand reached up, his fingers hesitant on where to touch without hurting her. He ended up settling for her wrist, his fingers brushing against her pulse, probably feeling how embarrassing fast her heart was beating.

But then again, she could see on the monitor beside the bed that his wasn't beating any slower.

"Edrisa," he called out, waiting until her eyes settled on his. "You _saved_ my life," he let out, his heart pouring out from his mouth, the sentence so short and yet carrying so much that he left unsaid. "And that is something for which I will be forever grateful to you."

Edrisa's first reaction was to simply deny it, to dismiss his gratitude as misplaced and unfounded. But then she remembered the profiler shortly after they had met, barely even knowing her name. She remembered how he hadn't hesitated for a moment before placing himself at risk to save her from a deadly, poisonous snake at a crime scene. She would never forget the look on his face as he moved closer to her, closer to danger, drawing the snake in his direction and effectively saving her life. He had looked... happy. Confident and fulfilled. Because he was helping someone.

Because he was saving a life.

The medical examiner could almost see herself, fifteen years old and painfully awkward, telling her parents that she wanted to be a doctor so that she could help people. Because she wanted to save lives.

So much time had passed since she had done it that she had almost forgotten the feeling. It felt... good.

"It was my pleasure," she finally said, a warm smile on her lips, her bandaged hand moving to cover his. "Just don't make a habit out of it, will you?" she added with a playful wink.

Malcolm returned her smile, sinking deeper into his pillow. She could see that, despite all of his demands to go home, he was still too tired to keep himself awake for extended periods of time. Severe blood loss would do that to people.

"Not unless that's another one of your fantasies, in which case I wouldn't wanna ruin it," he added, eyes heavy with sleep, a coy smile playing upon his lips. "You know, rescuing me from the evil clutches of bad people... taking me home to nurse me back to health..."

Edrisa would be forever thankful that Bright fell asleep before he could actually see just how deeply she was blushing at his way too accurate words. How in the heavens had the blasted man found out about that _one_?


End file.
